• Question: Do you think it is possible to see a cell act like an animal?

    Asked by codfish to Lewis, Ian on 21 Mar 2014.
    • Photo: Lewis Dean

      Lewis Dean answered on 21 Mar 2014:

      Animals are made up of cells and they all act together to make us what we are. There are single celled organisms (things like bacteria). They reproduce, respire and have to consume food, but you wouldn’t get them doing things like fetching a stick that you threw for them!

      There are some amazing single-cell organisms that seem to work together, though. They can act together to form a biofilm that can cover a surface and ‘move’ in a particular direction. While the cells are all separate, they work together – it is pretty amazing!

    • Photo: Ian Hands-Portman

      Ian Hands-Portman answered on 21 Mar 2014:

      Yes definitely – thinks like Amoeba and Paramecium are single celled animals and move around responding to their environment, looking for food and avoiding trouble.
      There are things like the slime mold – Dictyostelium that have a very strange life, they normally live as individual cells moving around like amoeba but when things get tough all these free cells clump together and form a ‘slug’ that’s able to move much more effectively into a new home. Some of them have even been seen to ‘farm’ the bacteria they use as food and take samples with them when they move.

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